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James Pavatt, killer of lover's husband, now eligible for execution

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of Oklahoma death row inmate James Pavatt, who helped his girlfriend kill her husband in Oklahoma City in 2001.

Pavatt, 66, has exhausted his appeals in the case and is now the 26th inmate eligible for an execution date when the state resumes executions.

Pavatt and Brenda Andrew were convicted separately of conspiring to kill and killing Rob Andrew to get the proceeds of an insurance policy.

Andrew was estranged from her husband at the time, and she and Pavatt were having an affair.

Rob Andrew, an advertising executive, was shot in his garage as he came to his old house to pick up his children for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Pavatt and Brenda Andrew were caught crossing back into the United States from Mexico months later. Both were given the death penalty.

In his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Pavatt argued that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should have heard his challenge to the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s law that allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty when the killing was “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.”

The Oklahoma attorney general’s office told justices they should decline Pavatt’s “invitation to second-guess the Tenth Circuit’s rulings on these procedural matters. In any event, the Tenth Circuit’s determinations were correct.”

Without comment, the justices declined to review the 10th Circuit decision.

Oklahoma has not executed an inmate since 2015. In 2018, the state abandoned lethal injection as its execution method and has been exploring the use of nitrogen gas.

Chris Casteel

Chris Casteel began working for The Oklahoman's Norman bureau in 1982 while a student at the University of Oklahoma. Casteel covered the police beat, federal courts and the state Legislature in Oklahoma City. From 1990 through 2016, he was the...
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